Focuses on property rights in land, giving a short narrative of some of the key ‘land tenure’ or ‘land policy’ issues and the emerging consensus around them. Addresses the redistribution of property rights in land from large to small farmers. A policy framework for redistributive land reform is outlined within which the competing paradigms can actually compete there where it matters: on the ground.

Commission on Human Rights
59th Session

Item 10: Economic, social and cultural rights

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It is in the remote parts of Myanmar that the worst abuses of the right to food continue. Within recent weeks, the Asian Legal Resource Centre has spoken with persons travelling in some of these areas. They have told of thousands of people displaced from their lands, some for years, starving in the jungle. One who carried an emaciated child to a Thai town just across the border spoke of the utter shock and disbelief among medical staff at the child?s condition...

El presente Decreto crea el Programa de riego y recuperación de tierras degradadas, adscrito al Ministerio de Agricultura y Ganadería (MAG), cuyos objetivos son el fortalecimiento e inversión en los siguientes ámbitos: 1) Optimización de uso del agua, especialmente la destinada para riego; 2) Reactivación de las economías de los pequeños agricultores; 3) Generación de empleo; 4) Garantizar la seguridad alimentaria interna del país; 5) Lograr mayor estabilidad socioeconómica en las zonas rurales, disminuyendo el crecimiento acelerado de los centros urbanos; y, 6) Armonizar el desarrollo urba

A critical analysis of the draft Land Policy. Contains introduction, land delivery system and accessibility to land, title deeds on customary land, vestment of land, land market, gender issues, allocation to foreigners (with particular reference to white farmers from Zimbabwe), dispute resolution, land management information systems, concluding remarks.

Presents two personal testimonies of eviction and dispossession to illustrate the long and complex political history of land in Zimbabwe. The first concerns the eviction of white commercial farmers from one district in December 2002, the second of black peasant farmers in 1948, to make way for the white post-1945 white war veterans.

A dynamic agricultural sector is crucial for economic growth, poverty alleviation, and food security in developing countries. Although primary agricultural activities are declining over time as a share of the economy, they still represent about one-fourth of total economic activity and 60 percent of total employment in low-income developing countries. Primary and processed food products account for about 20 percent of these countries' merchandise trade.

What can governments in rich countries do about poverty in poor countries, apart from increasing and improving aid and endorsing ambitious poverty reduction goals? Answer: get serious about reforming their own farm policies and start dismantling the agricultural trade restrictions and subsidies that contribute to mass poverty across the developing world.

Globalization could and should benefit developing countries. But unlike a rising tide that lifts all boats, large and small, globalization is unequal. It has fallen far short of its much-ballyhooed potential to help the world’s poorest people out of poverty. Instead, a combination of policies in both rich and poor countries creates conditions for the rich to prosper and many of the poor to fall more deeply into destitution. Agricultural protectionism in rich countries enables them to skew markets in their favor. Tariffs and trade barriers routinely exclude developing-country products.

Zimbabwe’s fast-track land reform has had a bad press. Reports of violence and intimidation have obscured the reality that formal procedures used to settle black farmers in model villages bear a striking resemblance to earlier colonial procedures. Whilst colonial myths about African farmers as subsistence oriented and inefficient live on, evidence from south-eastern Zimbabwe suggests that the reforms have benefited some poor black farmers

Is the World Bank’s approach to land relations gender insensitive? Is it realistic to pin poverty reduction aspirations on the promotion of credit markets and reliance on women’s unpaid labour? Does the acquisition of secure tenure rights necessarily benefit poor women? How should advocates of women’s rights in Africa respond to the Bank’s land agenda?

"In contrast to popular predictions of Africa’s worsening economic decline, recent research supports an alternative and more positive vision of Africa’s future. New political commitment and African ownership of the development agenda, combined with a renewed focus on and investments in smallholder-led agriculture, have the potential to halt or reverse the current downward spiral of hunger, poverty, environmental degradation, disease, and civil strife.

Enset (Ensete ventricosum) production is declining, and it faces genetic erosion due to drought, diseases and population pressure. Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) and additional formal survey studies on 315 households were conducted over three consecutive years (1998–2000) in the Sidama, Wolaita and Hadiya ethnic regions of southern Ethiopia to assess traditional cultivation methods, analyse the production systems, and evaluate farm-based enset biodiversity. The regions differ in terms of cultural background, resources, farming systems, population density, and agro-ecology.